be met with in the precious remains of the Greek and Etruscan artists. In the more common articles he has penciled it with the most elegant designs, shaped it into shells and leaves, twisted it into wicker-work, and trailed the ductile foliage round the light basket. He has filled our cabinets and chimney-pieces with urns, lamps, and vases, on which are lightly traced, with the purest simplicity, the fine forms and floating draperies of Herculaneum. In short, he has given to our houses a classic air, and has made every saloon and every dining-room schools of taste. I should add, that there is a great demand abroad for this elegant manufacture. The empress of Russia has had some magnificent services of it; and the other day one was sent the king of Spain, intended as a present from him to the archbishop of Toledo, which cost a thousand pounds. Some morning you shall go through the rooms in the London warehouse.

Hen. I should like very much to see manu factures, now you have told me such curious things about them.

Fa. You will do well! there is much more entertainment to a cultivated mind in seeing a pin made, than in many a fashionable diversion which young people half ruin themselves to attend. In the mean time I will give you some account of one of the most elegant of them, which is paper.

Hen. Pray do, my dear father.

Fa. It shall be left for another evening, however, for it is now late. Good night.

THE flying fish, says the fable, had originally no wings; but, being of an ambitious and discontented temper, she repined at being alwayconfined to the waters, and wished to soar in the air. "If I could fly like the birds," said she, "I should not only see more of the beauties of nature, but I should be able to escape from those fish which are continually pursuing me, and which render my life miserable." She therefore petitioned Jupiter for a pair of wings; and immediately she perceived her fins to expand. They suddenly grew to the length of her whole body, and became at the same time so strong as to do the office of a pinion. She was at first much

pleased with her new powers, and looked with an air of disdain on all her former companions; but she soon perceived herself exposed to new dangers. When flying in the air, she was incessantly pursued by the tropic bird, and the albatross; and, when for safety she dropped into the water, she was so fatigued with her flight, that she was less able than ever to escape from her old enemies the fish. Finding herself more unhappy than before, she now begged of Jupiter to recall his present; but Jupiter said to her, "When I gave you your wings, I well knew they would prove a curse; but your proud and restless disposition deserved this disappointment Now, therefore, what you begged as a favour keep as a punishment !"

A LESSON IN THE ART OF DISTINGUISHING.

F. Come hither, Charles; what is that you see grazing in the meadow before you ?

C. It is a horse.

F. Whose horse is it?

C. I do not know; I never saw it before. F. How do you know that it is a horse, if you never saw it before?

C. Because it is like other horses.

F. Are all horses alike, then?

C. Yes.

F. If they are all alike, how do

horse from another?

C. They are not quite alike.

F. But they are so much alike, that you can easily distinguish a horse from a cow?

C. Yes, indeed.

F. Or from a cabbage?

C. A horse from a cabbage! yes, surely I can. F. Very well; then let us see if you can tell how a horse differs from a cabbage?

C. Very easily; a horse is alive.

F. True; and how is every thing called which is alive?

C. I believe all things that are alive are called animals.

F. Right; but can you tell me what a horse and a cabbage are alike in ?

C. Nothing, I believe.

F. Yes, there is one thing in which the slenderest moss that grows upon the wall is like the greatest man or the highest angel.

C. Because God made them.

F. Yes; and how do you call every thing that is made?

C. A creature.

F. A horse then is a creature, but a living creature; that is to say, an animal.

C. And a cabbage is a dead creature; that is the difference.

F. Not so, neither; nothing is dead that has never been alive.

C. What must I call it then, if it is neither dead nor alive?

F. An inanimate creature; there is the animate and the inanimate creation. Plants, stones, metals, are of the latter class, horses belong to the former.

C. But the gardener told me some of my cabbages were dead, and some were alive.

F. Very true. Plants have vegetative life, a principle of growth and decay; this is common